What, ultimately, is the message of Lord of the Flies?
Through his novel, Lord of the Flies, Golding manages to portray the adamantine link between human savagery and civilization by proposing they occur simultaneously; they can be obscure or one can predominate the other but neither can be extinguished completely. Starting off with depicting the civilized part of the boys as more dominant and eventually settling into a state of savagery illustrated by Jack’s rule, Golding plays with the human nature. In an attempt to make sense of it and to explore human mentality, he succeeds at outlining the reason for conflict; the conflict between two concomitant aspects of human nature inside of us. When the boys arrive at the island they are functioned …show more content…
The struggle between the civilized and savage parts of humans is best portrayed through Jack; “He snatched his knife out of the sheath and slammed it into a tree trunk. Next time there would be no mercy” (Golding 31). Even though Jack expresses his yearning for hunting and giving into the illness that resided inside of him, the more preferred ‘humanized’ part of him takes control of his action. This control, however, slips right through his fingers as he settles into the nature of the island and ignites the dark flame within himself. Portraying the overthrow of his civilized-self, “Jack was on top of the sow, stabbing downward with a knife … Jack found the throat and the hot blood spouted over his hands… He giggled” (135). His rowdy, primitive temperament shows the domination of his undisciplined nature; the pleasure he gains from his unruly actions delineates the existence of savagery inside of him. Even though his civilized self starts being suppressed, it never leaves him completely. His giggle represents this as he expresses a characteristic of the civilized world even when he has given into his hunger for savagery; he did not laugh out loud nor does Golding associate
Through his novel, Lord of the Flies, Golding manages to portray the adamantine link between human savagery and civilization by proposing they occur simultaneously; they can be obscure or one can predominate the other but neither can be extinguished completely. Starting off with depicting the civilized part of the boys as more dominant and eventually settling into a state of savagery illustrated by Jack’s rule, Golding plays with the human nature. In an attempt to make sense of it and to explore human mentality, he succeeds at outlining the reason for conflict; the conflict between two concomitant aspects of human nature inside of us. When the boys arrive at the island they are functioned …show more content…
The struggle between the civilized and savage parts of humans is best portrayed through Jack; “He snatched his knife out of the sheath and slammed it into a tree trunk. Next time there would be no mercy” (Golding 31). Even though Jack expresses his yearning for hunting and giving into the illness that resided inside of him, the more preferred ‘humanized’ part of him takes control of his action. This control, however, slips right through his fingers as he settles into the nature of the island and ignites the dark flame within himself. Portraying the overthrow of his civilized-self, “Jack was on top of the sow, stabbing downward with a knife … Jack found the throat and the hot blood spouted over his hands… He giggled” (135). His rowdy, primitive temperament shows the domination of his undisciplined nature; the pleasure he gains from his unruly actions delineates the existence of savagery inside of him. Even though his civilized self starts being suppressed, it never leaves him completely. His giggle represents this as he expresses a characteristic of the civilized world even when he has given into his hunger for savagery; he did not laugh out loud nor does Golding associate